Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence in Cantonese–English bilingual children: The case of right-dislocation

Abstract

This corpus-based study demonstrates a case of bidirectional cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of right-dislocation by Cantonese–English bilingual children and interprets the results in relation to Hulk and Müller’s hypothesis for cross-linguistic influence. Longitudinal data reveal qualitative and quantitative differences between bilingual and monolingual children in the development of right-dislocation in English and Cantonese. While right-dislocation lies at the syntax–pragmatics interface, both delay and acceleration are observed in bilingual development. The article’s findings in general support Hulk and Müller’s hypothesis for cross-linguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition, but the bidirectional influence observed is not predicted by their formulation of the hypothesis. Moreover, the results suggest that language dominance may influence the directionality of cross-linguistic influence.